


Badlands

by notyouranswer (gorgeouschaos)



Category: The Dresden Files - Jim Butcher
Genre: Book 12: Changes, Book 14: Cold Days, Canon Temporary Character Death, Character Death, Gen, POV Minor Character, Post-Book 12: Changes, Relationship Study
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-19
Updated: 2019-06-19
Packaged: 2020-05-15 01:17:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19285120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gorgeouschaos/pseuds/notyouranswer
Summary: Harry Dresden is a good man who’s been lost in the badlands for a long time now.Mac watches Dresden’s tall, trenchcoated figure leave his bar and rephrases.Harry Dresden has been in the badlands for as long as Mac has known him. But Dresden isn’t lost.Yet.





	Badlands

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired heavily by Mac's words to Harry at the beginning of Changes. Fuelled by irritation that Peace Talks isn't out yet. Written mostly by my three am brain.  
> Enjoy! :)
> 
> Edit: HA I FINALLY FIGURED OUT PARAGRAPH BREAKS IN THIS FORMAT

Harry Dresden is a good man who’s been lost in the badlands for a long time now.

Mac watches Dresden’s tall, trenchcoated figure leave his bar and rephrases.

Harry Dresden has been in the badlands for as long as Mac has known him. But Dresden isn’t lost.

Yet.

\---

He hears Dresden has taken up Mab’s offer not long after that last conversation, and part of Mac wonders if maybe all of his misgivings about the wizard had been justified from the beginning.

(Mac knew what Slade had become. And so had Dresden.)

But then he remembers there had been a kid at stake-- Dresden’s kid-- and tries not to tarnish his own memory of a good man.

\---

After it’s all over-- Chichen Itza, the Red Court, _Dresden _\-- Raith tells him why Dresden had done it.__

__McAnally’s Bar is the site of Dresden’s wake, three days after Dresden falls into Lake Michigan. Murphy asks Mac and he doesn’t even consider telling her no._ _

__Mac’s bar is full, the tables packed with friends and allies and even John Marcone at one point. Mac silently serves beer and lemonade and sandwiches and tries not to picture Dresden in his usual seat, left empty for the occasion._ _

__Raith stays to help Mac clear up after everyone else had gone. Mac knows his guests are walking through a night that is a little less safe now._ _

__“You know why he did it?” Raith asks, somewhat abruptly, as he wipes a table down._ _

__Mac grunts noncommittally._ _

__Raith barrels on. The vampire’s eyes are too silvery-bright for comfort._ _

__“There was a fire. At his apartment. He was trying to get someone out and he fell. He broke his spine.”_ _

__Mac stops wiping the glass in his hands._ _

__“He broke his spine, and he couldn’t move. So he made a deal with Mab so he could save Maggie.”_ _

_Maggie_ , Mac muses, and he thinks Dresden wouldn't change anything he'd done, even if he could. 

____Raith places a pile of plates on the bartop._ _ _ _

____“Just thought you should know,” he mutters. Then he leaves without stopping for his coat._ _ _ _

______ _ _

\---

Mac hears about the Rag Lady in hushed murmurs as Molly Carpenter disappears, sees a hard-faced, short-haired Murphy less and less as the war picks up, watches Thomas Raith grow leaner and more feral as Dresden stays dead.

Mac keeps the bar neutral, keeps it safe, and wonders if Harry had known he was leaving other people lost in the badlands.

\---

Dresden comes back from the dead months later as the Winter Knight. He radiates old, cruel magic, feels like ice where he used to be fire, and Mac almost takes him up on his offer to leave when He Who Walks Behind appears.

(A small, selfish part of him is afraid of what the Outsider will reveal. All he wants is to be free from what he used to be a part of.

But he’s out. And if anyone could understand that, it would be the two men in front of him.)

For that brief pause of consideration, Mac stares at Dresden and his brother, so alike but so different, and wonders if he’s really willing to jeopardize his sanctuary for a White Court vampire and the Winter Knight.

Mac remembers, then, why Dresden had accepted the mantle, and that Thomas had cared enough to tell him the reason.

\---

Mac's still out. Out of all of it.

But even if Dresden has lost his path...

He went back for his neighbors.

He fought a war and sold his soul for his kid. 

Mac thinks that Dresden is still trying to find his way through.

Dresden is still a good man in the badlands.

Mac pulls out his shotgun.

\---

Mac knows he can't hope to fight He Who Walks Behind like this. He knows it's a lost cause to even try.

But he also knows that sometimes fighting for a cause you know is lost is the point of it all.

A good man fighting his way through the badlands taught him that.


End file.
